The visit yesterday had my grandparents asking questions
about why everyone was calling me Jessie, and why my nails were fabulous, and why it kinda felt like I was wearing a bra or an undershirt, anyway, it came up.
They didnāt quite fully understand and had apparently been asking my Mom about it in the car on the ride home. I had no idea about this until I got a message from my grandpa this afternoon with a link to a blurb about Albert Cashier and saying they never heard of them, and wondering if I had, and that he prays I find peace and a feeling of worth.
So I end up asking my mom, she says she didnāt tell them, I tell her Iām not mad, that itās fine (even though it isnāt really, but whatever at this point) and she says she didnāt say anything. Then we talk about my son for a minute and some other things, and then she says she had to explain everything to her parents.
Cool, I get it, but you just said you didnāt, so which is it?
Iām trying to communicate what is up to her, and end up writing it all to my grandpa, I freaked out after I sent the messages, and went to go delete them, cool, except delete isnāt unsend in this case, and now I canāt get to the message to unsend it so I guess I officially came out to them now, in the worst most uncontrolled fucking way possible. She starts telling me she was anxious, and was being a little coy still not getting to what she said (which at this point doesnāt matter), and I tell her at least they got to see first hand that Iām happier and healthier than Iāve ever been before they found out. She again hints at her telling them by saying they were supportive and calm about the whole thing and asks me if I feel relieved. See, the thing is, you can never really express to a cis-heteronormative person exactly how laboring coming out is. The only thing I could think to say was
āComing out is exhausting. Itās like emotional breakthroughs youāve had with yourself you just have to keep having again and again and again. Iām relieved, and many other things.ā
She concedes that I had really ran and struggled with myself, and my gender identity and my place in the world for a long time, and that they are sorry for things they said and did that made me feel like I couldnāt be myself and be a part of their lives, and that itās been very painful for everyone involved (you know what, progress is progress, Iāll allow some cishet victimhood, to a point anyway). Then she remarks at how instrumental the lady I take care of has been in my life through different parts of it, and she wonders if she has any idea.
You have to know some things about her, her name is Lucretia, sheās an Air Force vet, she is the mother of my partner and there were always rumors that she was a closeted lesbian (it turns out she was so closeted sheās still in the closet to herself to this day). She helped me get out of the bad school situation I was in, she helped me get a greyhound ticket away when I was homeless, sheās a good lady.
āI wonder if she has any idea.ā it rings through again
The sad reality strikes me that she doesnāt and she never will. She has no idea where she is anymore, she thought she was in a basement, and they donāt have those around here, sheās vacant a lot and doesnāt have much energy to get up anymore without assistance. Sheās sunsetting fast, and even if I told her, sheād forget, and she wouldnāt ever really know. It was tragic, and I began to cry. I tell her about how positive everything has been for me, and how I only wish I had started HRT earlier, because I only ended up running from feelings I could never escape from and how Iām glad this hasnāt been the disaster Iāve been imagining for 20 years.
She almost immediately calls me, Iām still crying
We have a brief talk about not looking back and this and that, and she talks about how close we were, kinda goes over how she realizes now that I had a lot of things I was dealing with related to this that she didnāt understand at the time why I was having problems. She tells me there is a picture I need to have, that she is led to give me, She says thereās four generations in it, My great Grandma, my Grandma, my mom, and myself. Sheās almost kind of crying. Her voice gets weak as she asks āThere couldāve been your sister or your cousin there, but I wanted you in that generational pictureā¦ā her voice is cracking āWhy did I want you in that picture? I donāt think itās a coincidenceā¦ā she starts to kinda cry a bit, and iām crying, I tell her, sometimes our brains know things deep down because of pattern recognition that we canāt really draw to the conscious of our minds, but they influence our decisions. She kinda cries, she canāt say it, but sheās trying to tell me in her own words, ** this picture I want you to have is a generational picture of the women in our family **. She tells me explicitly that Iām her child, and that she accepts me becoming the person I need to be as her child, that she sees Iāve had so many problems related to this so long, so much self loathing, cutting myself, being bullied and antagonized as a sissy, and that sheās glad Iāve found myself, and that she just wants me to keep being happy and healthy, and that she doesnāt believe in coincidences.
Iām dumbstruck
See, dreams have been a large part of who I am, my journey. They help me make sense of things, they give me guidance, sometimes they give me escape, other times a better look into myself, and on rare occasions they are a bit more occult in nature. From a young age I had premonitions and a heavy sense of Deja Vu from dreams. Not like a fortune teller, always more mundane, but it opened me up to the idea that dreams can be spiritual to some extent. When I was young my paternal grandfather visited me in a dream, told me he was sick, really sick, and he didnāt feel good, but that now he feels much better, and that heāll be okay, and that heās sorry. I didnāt know why he died at the time, I was told later he thought he had killed a motorcyclist and didnāt want to go back to prison so he went home and handled that anxiety for himself. The experience helped shape my compassionate view for the people who wind up in that dark alley, but also kind of set precedent that I may see spirits in my dreams.
Itās different when you have a spirit with you in a dream. Most of the time you have an acute sense that these people that populate dreams are NPCs so to speak, but thereās actual presence with spirits.
My maternal great grandma came to visit me a few years ago, and told me it was alright. I came out to her, and she told me she knows, and that itās okay, that she loves me. I never shared that dream, and here my mom is saying she is led to give me the picture with her, so I had to share that with her and she reiterates that she doesnāt believe in coincidence.
We have to get off the phone quickly after that, but it was a good phonecall.
After I got my son home he asked to play some videogames, so I broke out the SNES classic and we played some two player games, then he started playing games himself when he settled on A link to the past.
Heās so much like me itās unreal, and he isnāt biologically mine, I donāt think thatās a coincidence either.
Sorry for the novella, but I wanted to share with someone in the hopes they donāt have to wait 20 years too.